Will: Best overall OccupationChad: Bright guyGerry : FunniestStupid Jacob: Ruler of the Universe, probably the best idea. Read up on Napoleon and Alexander the Great (two of my favorites) if you haven't already (explosives?). Ever play Warcraft and use the demolition guys, they say "We blow things up" with an acsent.

I can really relate to Mofo and Flangepart. Flangpart you were a cab driver. Me to. You've had some time to think I see (did it really matter). I also drove for about 4.5 years in the second half of the 80's.

Scott...the strangest fare was a drunk guy who had me keep his gun while he went to buy booze...(Charter Arms 44. Bulldog. Empty.)...$20 tip. My best tip? A $5 fare for a drunk who had a chick waiting for him at the bar...and a $40tip! No wonder i only drink moderatly at home...But, ya gotta admit, if ya wanna be a writer, driving a hack will give you a lot of ideas to works with!Man!

I often seen the other cabbies as misguided Buddha's. My best tip was $100 for waiting about 20 minutes for someone. Drove almost 5 years and was robbed twice one at gun point and the second time at knife point in a two week period Feb. 87. One time a snow storm closed the whole city of Atlantic City by city officials and someoe offered me $100 dollars to drive them 12 miles outside the city and I took the fare because the cab owner just put new tires on the car a week before. I had Roberto Duran in my cab and he passed gas and he and his buddy thought it was funny. One time I had Larence Tayler in my cab and he had an accountant with him and they were calculating how much he was spending in my back seat. Weirdest tip was a hockey puck that was given to me by a NY Ranger, which I accepted. Many others stories related to casino life, fights, homeless people, prostitutes, madcap stories and comedy, and criminals of a variety of sorts. All the elements of city life. Often me and others have thought of writing a book, but we were all independant drivers with to much freedom and not enough disipline. Most drivers either died or went into various forms of insanity that could only be altered by many years out of the business. We truely ruled the world or so we felt.

I drove cab in Charlottesville, Virginia and Boulder, Colorado, while nominally in grad. school. I missed out on the post about people's jobs -- I work in a Credit Union now in Loan Support, and try to get as many acting jobs as I can. I trust everyone's visited the Robochic review here by now?In Virginia I once saw a man walk out of a house smiling at 2 young women getting in my cab. He was dressed in boxer shorts and was completely crimson from a gushing neck wound. "He been drinkin Vokka all day, dat's why he bleedin' so much!" declaimed one of my passengers, as she slid the knife that did the deed between the seat cushions in the back. 2 years driving in Charlottesville . . . Hunter S. Thompson once rode with me to Stapleton Airport in Denver when I drove in Boulder: "It's a stupid dangerous HELLISH world out there, Peter, but don't let it FRIGHTEN you!!", he said, flinging boxes of old burgers and fries around the inside of the Checker & at the passing traffic. I had Roy Buchannan a week before he died & once had a long conversation with Steven Wright about hummingbirds. 5 years driving in Boulder . . . .Brewery worker (Boulder Beer), museum guard, liquor store clerk, street perfomer, standup comic, shipyard barnacle-scraper, McDonald's(The worst!! the worst!!), UPS driver, drycleaner/laundry worker, and, when very very lucky, actor.

Well, I don't know what Scott's take on it would be, but it's a mixed bag at best. The good parts can be very good indeed: Cash tips, free food & gifts of liquor & other stuff, some really interesting people and occasionally great conversations. Plus you get to travel to parts of your work area you would never be aware of otherwise & all the mixed blessings that that may entail. The bad stuff would include insane drunks, insane junkies, general insanity, having to listen to insane babbling drivel, be it hostile or friendly, smelly puking drunks, people who run on their fare & don't pay or want to fight you for no reason. It cuts both ways. Whenever my car breaks down these days and I have to take a cab, I find I start the trip by remembering all the good stuff about cabbing & by the time I come to my destination I have started to recall the very bad as well.I'd rather be an actor.

So you're saying that as an actor you don't have to associate with "insane drunks, insane junkies, general insanity, having to listen to insane babbling drivel, be it hostile or friendly, smelly puking drunks." I thought that was a description of Hollywood right there...

...Oh yeah, all the drunks and insane people in Hollywood are beautiful and that makes all the difference, right? :)

Really, I'm just jealous. My life is so bland and boring most of the time, it could use a little drunk, insane, babbling drivel to liven it up.

WOW. And i thought I had some weird trips! But, ya know, there is one...just one...thing i miss...the old Checker cab! Those thing were great. Like a warehouse on wheels. I wish i could have one now. Talk about comfort. Room enough for a backseat bar and a t.v, with that long bench seat you could realy lay..sleep on. The Checker cab, i do miss.

You know, it's a good point about the insanity of creative people. Sure, I've suffered at their hands too, but it's easier to walk away from an insane actor on foot than one in the back of your cab.I used to drive a Checker. A tank. Loved it.In truth, most of the actors I meet in Hollywood and Colorado are serious about their craft to the point of boredom. This makes the real lunatics -- and, oh boy, are there REAL lunatics in power in Hollywood!! -- stand out all the more via contrast.